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FOSS Multicast Document Sharing?
Jawdy writes "I am currently leading a small game development project with artists and developers scattered all over the country. Getting together is somewhat difficult, but we try to do this every couple of months.
We often share all kinds of documents with each other, and even do so while using IM clients (GTalk and MSN), but this winds up being a tedious process of: send document; read and edit; send back; rinse and repeat.
What I wanted to ask fellow slashdotters is, if anyone knows of any FOSS software that can handle IM (or even voice chat), Whiteboard and document sharing — where we can all see the document, pass around 'editing rights' and edit live. Even several small apps that handle the individual components would help out!"
Abiword has an experimental plugin to allow collaborative document editing. Otherwise, I'd suggest just using Google Docs.
What about Google Docs?
It's not an F/OSS solution, but it supports ODT, DOC, and just about everything else, and allows for the cooperative editing that you're looking for.
Plus, you have the added advantage of not needing to host and upkeep some app.
Google documents or Zoho or some other gratis (but typically proprietary) "cloud" solution might be reasonable.
If you're fine with text-only, you have a lot of options. VIM and EMACS both allow collaborative editing, you can share a screen session, or you can get a specialized collaborative editor (such as Gobby and ACE) or a specialized framework, such as DocSynch
If you need light-weight word processing, Abiword has a plugin for real-time collaboration.
Heavier weight word processing of DOCX can be done with Plutext.
If you need more graphical documents & the above doesn't seem to fit AND if you have a small group of friends who you trust, I'd just go "simple" & host with VNC or some other remote desktop protocol.
As far as other pieces, there is a lot of good F/OSS voice/IM/whiteboard software. Coccinella and ekiga are good examples.
OpenH323 is basically Netmeeting, but OSS version. Mind you, it uses (surprise) H.323 protocol, and not all firewalls like it (since it requires connectivity to both directions).
http://openh323.sourceforge.net/
I'd try google docs first. You can share live copies of documents (word processing files + spreadsheets), including keeping revision history and simultaneous live edits.
Well, for the "document sharing" and "editing rights" part you could use Dropbox.
gobby , does exactly what you are looking for in gnome. I'm sure there are KDE and Windows and OSX Clients too
http://abicollab.net/ ?
I haven't tried it personally, but if it's any help, yeah. (:
For really simple interactivity, I would suggest something along the lines of
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vnc-reflector/
Let one person do the application hosting and get your committee to VNC to that host. Then everybody can do everything, including applications that don't have shared edit features built in.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
You could start a VNC server on a computer running applications that you'd use in your meeting, such as office applications. Then have everyone connect using a shared session. TightVNC is what I use, but the feature is standard across any VNC implementation. In the options dialog, you can "Request Shared Session."
Check out Dabbleboard. It was written by a friend of mine. There is a video showing you how it works.
http://www.dabbleboard.com
Gobby is an open source client-server application which supports multiple documents in one session, document synchronisation on request, password protection and an IRC-like chat for communication.
Icecore now known kablink may be what you need.
http://www.kablink.org/
It's the opensource version of Teaming + Conferencing now owned by Novell (used to be SiteScape)
Disclaimer. I work for them and I've not used this software.
ECF is an integrated Jabber (XMPP)-based protocol that allows collaborative work. Introduction here. "Real-time communication and collaboration features for teams using Eclipse such as peer-to-peer file sharing, remote opening of Eclipse views, screen capture sharing, and real-time shared editing."
Other Jabber products you might find useful are Coccinella with whiteboarding, etc.
you had me at #!
I've used Trac a lot for distributed projects - the integration is very nice.
This guy seemed to want real time colloboration, though, which is why I referenced Eclipse Communication Framework in other post, rather than a wiki.
you had me at #!
One more alternative you can look at: SharedView. It works over the firewall unlike several other apps.
Not exactly what you want, but Opendocman works very well for document sharing and control: http://www.opendocman.com/
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What part of FOSS was it you didnt understand?
The "write" activity on olpc supports collaborative editing out of the box using Jabber as a transport. I think it is a derivative of Abiword - but in any case it is open source.
I actually use it quite often, having a group document is a favorite activity among the olpc g1g1 kids - the usual take turns adding a sentence to a silly story type thing. (I never fully grew up.)
This is only for whiteboarding (not document sharing), but Inkscape can share a workspace over XMPP (Jabber) protocol. The feature is sometimes called Inkboard.
More info here: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/WhiteBoard and here: http://inkboard.sourceforge.net/
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
That would be my advice too... If one needs to integrate IM, etc. just tell your normal IM program to store logs in a directory under revision control...
But for communication I'd suggest a mailinglist or similar, Google Groups perhaps...
37signals has a number of apps that do these things. Campfire is web IM (with logging, file upload, etc.) and Basecamp is essentially a personal wiki with calendaring and other features.
Use Alfresco for document sharing.
There are three possibilities that I see here:
i) Use a revision control system. There are a bunch of good ones: git, monotone, darcs, bzr, subversion... This will give you ability to have people edit and share the documents.
It'll work better if you use document formats that are text based. e.g. unzipped ODF or latex for 'word processing'
These systems are very much collaborative, but are move away from 'instant' communications to 'parallel' editing with an assisted merge step.
ii) If you move away from RCS based thoughts to direct collaborative editing, then things get more complex. I only know of collaborative editors that edit one type of document. (and there is good reason for this - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation )
I know that inkscape (FOSS SVG editor) has a collaborative editing module based on Jabber comms. There are numerous collaborative text editors that people might point you towards.
iii) The third option is Google docs. For text this is ok. For images you can try to use their presentation software, but it is clunky for that purpose - use inkscape instead.
I'd recommend DropBox. Not, FOSS I know, but you get 2Gigs of storage gratis, and it is great. Skype is going to be the obvious solution for IM and voice, leaving you witj whiteboarding
Slightly OT, but how is Abiword these days? I'm running KDE 3.5, so I won't really have a chance to run it again until KDE-4 is really stable enough for my desktop. The last time I tried it a few years ago, it was alright, but I seem to remember having formatting problems. Has it matured a good bit in the last two years or so?
I'm really excited about the new koffice, but is Abiword worth a look, as well?
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
So your answer is NO, iChat will not work in this environment, force all employees to buy a mac is not an acceptable compromise where i live.
I've used VNC for this sort of thing before, but on a LAN and everyone was pretty close by. Even so, it let us all look at the same document, and edit it and see the changes live. It may take some tweaking to get good performance over the internet, but I think it's doable.
After this, the document is saved on the system with the VNC server. Then it can be put into a revision control system.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
That's what I set up for our office. It's not perfect but you do get a lot of functionality right out of the gate. Document sharing, chat, shared calendars. No one had trouble adapting, many were already forwarding mail to a Gmail account anyway.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I second this. My workplace also utilizes GotoMeeting (www.gotomeeting.com) and while it's based off of VNC if I remember correctly, it seems to perform far better. Like it was said above, it's not free, but it gives a lot. It also provides audio conferencing if everybody calls Citrix's phone line and enter the meeting ID. This means nobody needs any kind of audio conferencing solution since they provide it.
Very sweet solution if you have access to OS X. SubEthaEdit has very nice integration with iChat and will likely do much of what you ask right out of the box including multi-person live editing. Good luck
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.
If you collaborate on documents I would seriously consider a wiki - http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki is extremely simple to set up. You get revision control - Plug In structure for ODF/PDF export, easy editing etc. Plus a wiki is accessible even from a simple mobile browser with no extra installation needed. Multicast... well - More or less accessible to all at the same time. Looking forward to see this thread develop, as it could prove to be immensely helpful for any FOSS organization/project.
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
Well depends on your priority. For me, having a decent portable environment that was easily compatible with all environments was very crucial. Good development tools, easy communication amongst teammates, etc. If that is not a priority in the longrun, then yes, I'd say don't spend the money. It was my team mates that tipped me over to 'the Mac side' and I still run most of my FOSS tools on it (Eclipse, OpenOffice, Gimp, etc) but the communication and collaboration tools were DEFINITELY something that enabled me to telecommute and interact with my teammates like no other platform or software package allowed.
So, mark me as a troll (even though I'm stil saying that FOSS will replace this) but for now, this IS the best tool on the market that's FREE for collaboration. It just happens to be tied to the Mac OS.
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monotone -- a distributed revision control system -- everyone has a copy of the entire repository. The style of use is to commit frequently, even before any kind of code review, sync frequently, and decide which of the things committed and synced are in the final system later, after discussion, by certifying the revisions you decide to use.
Google "revision control".
No, "collaborative editing". Revision control gives a tedious process of: commit document; update; read and edit; commit; rinse and repeat. Wikipedia says that Abiword and Google Docs (among others others) probably do what's asked for here.
If you can handle the limited nature of their word processor.
The red5 opensource flash application server along with the openmeetings video conference / whiteboard application might help for organizing voice + video meetings. Clients just require a flash 10 plugin in their browser. opeenmeetings allows for uploading/sharing office files with live preview using openoffice + pdf2swf and image files with imagemagick and also add a nice desktop sharing feature.
but subethaedit has some cool text editing collaboration functionality.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Here you go... http://www.vmukti.com/ It integrates with Asterisk and it has Video Conferencing capabilities.
Why not use something like a Project Wonderland https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/? It gives you application sharing (VNC on win32 and X on Linux, etc). Also gives you 3D audio, chat, an avatar, a whiteboard and even the ability to phone into the world from a landline (hardware allowing). You can customize the area, add photos using Flickr http://blogs.sun.com/wonderland/entry/flickr_friday. Worth considering IMHO.
Try https://www.acrobat.com./ It gives you access to Buzzword, ConnectNow, My Files (file locker) and the ability to create and share documents... and best of all, its all FREE.
Revision control isn't fantastic; right now, I'm not aware of any that can merge changes to an OpenOffice or MS Office document. LaTeX would work, but most people don't know LaTeX. I imagine with XML-based word documents we'll see revision control plugins to merge the underlying XML instead of the binary files that contain them, but last time we looked at this it wasn't there yet.
There is an application called CoWord & CoOffice (http://cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/coword/) that sounds like it will do what you are needing to do. It requires M$ Word, but it was the only thing we found that allowed multi-user simultaneous document editing. Maybe one day this same functionality will show up in OpenOffice (HINT HINT!)
nVidia binary drivers != stable. For an exercise in frustration, though, try ATI's fglrx^&$%$%+++carrier lost
use a wiki.
i've been using confluence for a couple of years now, and cant imagine any sort of collaborative document writing without it.
there are plenty of plugins, including a recent whiteboard thing ( havent used it myself ), and you can always use skype/msn/other instant messaging in the background.
You might have a look at http://kablink.org/ from the former SiteScape (now Novell). I'm not sure if their current open source offering includes the voice collaboration server. I think it used to. Also lots of collaboration tools, although id does not seem to include a collaborative white board in the FOSS version.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
In other words, it's not "free," because it requires a software (and hardware) dongle.
(Screw the OSS aspect, I'm just talking price...)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
DimDim.com seems to have most of what you are looking for and is open source.
I wrote almost exactly that spec at an internship a few years back. It was a generic collaboration package, had whiteboard, chat, "email", hooks for writing new modules, even a crappy voice chat (raw PCM over UDP, since I never could figure out how to make the Java Speex module work). The only real problem was that the primary deployment was LAN-only, so I never had to optimize it for internet speeds/latencies. I have no idea who the code belongs to, I was working for a civilian agency in DoD (the Army Research Institute), so I suppose there's a chance it falls under one of the "government products are public domain" rules.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Except the poster did, in fact, specify FOSS in the question. Also, if they don't work exclusively Mac already, it's not free. Bundled with the OS doesn't mean free, it means "costed as part of the OS." That's part of why OEMs can say "With thousands of dollars worth of software!" when they sell these things. Also, the poster specified that it is a small (thus, unlikely to be able to afford computer replacement) game development project (thus, unlikely to be targeting OSX anyway). No one's dissing iChat... it just doesn't meet like 90% of the poster's requirements.
Well I agree. You do have a point. That was the original specification. But people who are unaware of Macs and think iChat is only an IM app may not be aware of how good of a collaboration tool it is above all others that actual cost. I think the post above yours put it best by saying that the sofwatre was free it just requires a software (and hardware) dongle. :)
Still my point was to offer to a fellow developer an app that has been really helpful in bringing telecommuting developers together to coloborate. It may only work with Mac but it works well with all platforms.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
(Warning: self-link.)
Draftastic is a web-based collaborative editor that avoids lock contention issues and works without JavaScript, among other good things.
It's free for a single document. Paid accounts get more documents, a permission system, and so on.
(Not OSS, but built using mostly open-source technology. We've contributed a few patches already, and are hoping to find other ways to "give back to the community".)
Elaborate on what you mean here?
It may only work with Mac but it works well with all platforms.
I don't believe that the screen sharing is open-protocol or anything like that; thus, it seems very single-platform, at least for the use case that is presented.
I like Wikis.
Haven't used it in a while, but I used PBWiki to organize all of my online table-top RPGs.
This is not exactly a direct response to the question as asked, since it's not F/OSS. That aside, Mac users can use SubEthaEdit http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/, and share a single document with each user's focus and changes being highlighted with a selected color. It uses the Apple "bonjour" protocol, but the concept shouldn't be all that difficult to implement in other software. I'm not aware of any at the moment, however.
http://thinkofit.com/webconf/workspaces.htm
Make an account at www.assembla.com it features everything you need. Supports: Direct filesharing, SVN, IM jabber server, Wiki, Scrum, Trac, Mercury aso Its without doubt the best alternative for low-budget or no-budget software development.
Hi There,
Zimbra is an open source email platform which has a document store and wiki-esq functionality. The latest version also has an instant messenger etc.
Some Moderators seriously do NOT understand the use of the "redundant" modifier in answers to a "Ask Slashdot" topic.
The parent topinc is NOT redundant. It answers the topic, with a good answer (google docs) and brings some further information to the table (simultaneous live edits)
Although it sometimes can be annoying to see multiple posts with the same suggestion (similar to a "me too"). However in this case, if you look carefully you can see the parent post, and most others who suggested Google Docs, have all posted at the same time (around 8:22pm). It is therefore reasonable to assume that this is not intended to be a "me too" post. Therefore it is unfair to mark this as redundant.
Also take into account, the person who asked the question may be looking at popularity,a nd many people suggesting "google docs", together with WHY, may help that person make a better decision.
I hope the "redundant" mod given to the parent is properly meta moderated, as it is unfair.
Have a nice day!
And the answer we're using is MediaWiki. Before we used MediaWiki we used GoogleDocs, but MediaWiki suits us better.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Years ago there used to be a collection of FOSS software that did just what the poster was describing. I don't know the status of those pieces of software are today, but its all been done before.
__________________________________
Free your mind - Flush your toilet
Dang, looks like perhaps the Gobby Web site went down under the load. Anyone have a mirror? I just set up a Gobby server and want my coworkers using Windows and Mac to be able to try it out, if clients exist for those platforms.
Hi. Thanks for this - GoogleDocs will definately help with all text elements (storylines, screenplay/scripts and even code), so I think we'll start implementing this. Our biggest problem is still concept images, model renders, screenshots etc. But thanks! Jawdy
I hadn't even thought about using VNC for "multicast" purposes. Heck, I didn't even know it could be done! This one will definately help regarding some of the more obscure or cpu-hungry apps and editors that we have to use. Thanks!
My apologies. Badly formed sentence. It may only work on Mac but Macs work well with all platforms. I learned this after switching. I can easily interface with my Ubuntu desktop, Debian servers, Windows network, printers, play media files, etc. It's practically the perfect medium between Windows and Linux. Sure I have to give up a little FOSS but I support it elsewhere. Just because I use one Mac machine to develop on doesn't mean I don't use FOSS on that Mac or have other Linux boxes.
If you can point to something else that works as well, I'll definitely give it a shot but I tried myself to find FOSS alternatives but they just don't exist... not this robust anyway.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
You can insert images into docs and spreadsheets. Organize them logically into a doc file and now you have revisions and multi-editing.
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This actually seems a good option that will provide more flexibility than a standard document editor.
You can embed media in the page or store it externally, you can create 'documents', tag them by usage, set edit permissions rather specifically (depending on the wiki backend chosen), it is fully open source (depending on the wiki backend chosen), it can be easily viewed by others who do not have write access, and easily navigated as a reference - many doc sharing softwares, such as Google Docs, make cross referencing and hierarchical referencing frustrating, and for those who are only invited to view the doc, it can be downright difficult.
For an Anonymous Coward, this person's got a good common sense suggestion.
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Maybe a Wiki will help you. As for exchanging files, a perhaps an FTP/HTTP/Samba server? Or each one of your running such an app?